Lightroom 4.4 RC and ACR 7.4 RC - Tests/Results

The watercolour effect is best seen in the map. The earlier version of LR is definitely worse. There has been very little tweaking done here . . LR sharpening was off then sharpened in PS noise reduction colour was low, luminance a bit higher - nothing drastic.

I will return to this a little more  methodically and give it another try - keeping your suggestion of SSharpen in mind.